


Reciprocal Noise

by sweetdreamsaremadeoffish



Category: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (TV 2018)
Genre: Anachronisms, Angst, F/F, F/M, SO, Self Harm, Yes We’re Kinda Going There, and, and i’ve hardly edited, and nothing super graphic, but just a little bit, oh right, tbh it’s trash but i mean, the slightest tiniest anachronisms, this has been in my drafts for a while, whatcha gonna do?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-10-05 23:20:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20497010
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetdreamsaremadeoffish/pseuds/sweetdreamsaremadeoffish
Summary: In retrospect, she should’ve known that trying to rekindle an innocent flame would only end with burns, that it was naïve to think she could ever escape history’s savage repetition. She should have known she was unworthy of something that good.





	Reciprocal Noise

**Author's Note:**

> yo i’m still alive guys. life has been hitting me hard lately, so i haven’t had much energy or inspiration to write but i’m trying to get back into the swing of it now that i’ve mostly gotten used to school. i don’t know, i think i’m just gonna play it by ear. we’ll see. :)
> 
> (title from a song. surprise surprise. a song by my friend Nancy Moran that i can’t remember the name of, but she’s cool and her song “Honestly” is a rage jam of mine, so. yeah.)
> 
> let me know what you think of this? it’s kind of garbage, but y’know it’s serving its purpose and that’s what matters, right? okay i’ll hush now.

It was almost laughable, really. Like a wretched plotline from one of Hilda’s romance novels.

She planned this surprise for weeks, digging through the attic once the house was empty. She sat up there for hours on end, sifting through boxes of precious memories, if only to locate the promiscuous ones.

Old photo albums, full to bursting with three Spellman children. Collages and Mothers’ Day cards from Sabrina’s elementary school years. Ambrose’s poetry from the first few decades of his arrest, before she tamed his violent scrawl with lessons in penmanship. An invitation to Edward’s wedding. A yellowed love letter from a young Romanian woman she met while studying midwifery. Hilda’s notebooks from school. Edward’s favorite-

They really must clean out this Satan-forsaken attic. The plumes of dust inflamed her allergies, leaving her eyes watery and ringed in red.

Finally, she unearthed her chest of French lingerie. France was her first destination after graduating from the academy. She figured it was a good place to start, seeing as her mother had already taught her the language and Paris was hosting the World’s Fair. It was full of the delicate elegance that portrayed her youth, before heartbreak and home caught up to her.

Busy with her new role as principal, Mary had to cancel the plans they’d made in anticipation of the Lupercalia. Holding a red and black bustier up to her skin, Zelda couldn’t help but grin. With a bit of deft seamstressing, it would do nicely. And there were a few time-tested positions sure to ease any trouble Mary had with her new one.

In retrospect, she should’ve known that trying to rekindle an innocent flame would only end with burns, that it was naïve to think she could ever escape history’s savage repetition. She should have known she was unworthy of something that good.

Her promises turned to sand, to ash, slipping through Zelda’s open hands.

Lilith was. Running. Out. Of. Time.

Time to explain herself and salvage the only thing that matters now.

When did this become her most prized possession? How did it come far enough that she’d give up her place in Hell to keep a single witch from leaving her side? She’d readily sacrifice her Dark Lord with no idea how she got to this point of enchanted desperation.

Zelda’s subtleties were dangerous, creeping up inside Lilith’s chest, catching her off guard. Her excuses were empty, falling on furious, unhearing ears. The look on the witch’s face, that deadly cocktailed concoction of hurt and confusion shaken in pale jade eyes, was killing her.

But no, this end began ages ago. This lingering, deep death had been growing in her lungs for a while, suffocating her on caring, on blooming buds of love planted in the enriched soils of her soul. Choking on another fruitless apology, she half expected to cough up bloodied petals of damnation, as if she needed some other sign to prove the inevitability of her fate.

She shouldn't have cared.

She had troves of inexclusive lovers. Her body was always wild, and freedom was the only air she ever breathed, so she was a stallion, untamable and untethered, never belonging anywhere, to anything or anyone, for too long.

She’d grown accustomed to constant starvation until Mary laid her down and loved her, _truly_ loved her. Whispered truth like honey in her ears, held her like a mossy cradle of the earth, quelled every ache and pain inside and out. She had made her whole again, rescuing and discovering pieces of Zelda that she herself had forgotten. Finally, her centuries-long hunger was satiated, satisfied with sweet nothings that were everything, by the tenderness of a lady love.

It became a craving instead, passionate and particular. She could not abide any touch or taste but Mary's.

And now her most beloved, favored flavor turned bitter on her tongue. Standing in the doorway, Zelda felt it twist and sour, curdling through to her core. Bile scalded her throat, strangling every question and cry but one.

She clutched her coat closed over careful stitching and sweet peach flesh. One bite—the sight of Mary intertwined with him against the hearth—swallowed her heart whole.

“Zelda, I can explain.”

She hated herself for the sob that followed. "How could you?"

“No, you don’t understand.” The edge of desperation in the bitch’s voice was pathetic. “I didn’t- He’s not mine.”

“Oh? Then pray tell, whose is he?”

“Mary Wardwell’s.” There was no gentle way to tell her. She thought she’d have more time. Zelda wasn’t buying it, face dark with fury.

“Well, unless you’re not Mary Wardwell-”

“Mary, what’s going on?” the man, greying and gangly, asked. “Who is this woman?”

Zelda glared daggers at him, braced against the doorframe.

Not-Mary turned to him first, speaking through her teeth. “Adam, would you give us a moment?”

He eyed her, lost and hesitant, but he obeyed.

Zelda lit a cigarette, impatient, infuriated. No, she would be impervious. She would hold to her dignity, even half-dressed for and hurt by the woman before her.

“Who the heaven are you?”

Not-Mary looked at her, those big blue eyes sad and silent.

Nothing. The room was hollow and flooded at once, frozen and aflame, and there was nothing Lilith could give to close the sudden canyon between them. Nothing safe, anyway. Nothing permanent. All she could leave her with were more questions, deeper cuts than this. A shallow wound may bleed, but it is less deadly.

Still, she couldn’t blame Zelda for leaving, the flicked butt of her cigarette scorching a scar into the carpet.

Zelda needed a palette cleanser.

She laid in his bed, mind racing afterward, trying to ignore the sweat-slicked body crushing her with the lethargy of lust.

The next day, when Blackwood proposed, she’d already given up. And if she couldn’t have love, she was going to have power.

That was for damn sure.

And if the mortal man, Adam, turned up with his throat slit later, there was no one to know it as anything aside from a tragedy.

Mary did not make an appearance at the funeral.

Or at school the next week, according to Sabrina.

Sweet, worried Sabrina, who went to visit her favorite teacher and found her sprawled before the fireplace, sewing scissors plunged into the freckled column of her neck, blood drying at the corner of her soft mouth like so much cherry wine. Of all the ugliness in the world, that was one Zelda wished she could have spared her niece a bit longer. But it was not to be.

Mary—or, Not-Mary—had left an envelope bearing Zelda’s name in curling script on the sideboard, which Sabrina had the good sense to deliver privately.

Zelda insisted upon embalming the woman’s corpse herself, but her Parisian lingerie and the letter burned alongside it in the funeral pyre.

**Author's Note:**

> like i said, just trying to get back into the swing of things.
> 
> On an unrelated note, would anyone enjoy a halfway decent Madam Spellman songwriter AU? It’s been sitting in my drafts for like two months, and it’s starting to pull me in.
> 
> Anyway, y’all are groovy. Thanks for stickin’ around.
> 
> Love, Ruby


End file.
